Fate's Slave - Shadow Slave X Honkai Star Rail

Sunny and Seele stood just outside Serval’s workshop once more, the door behind them still faintly vibrating from their earlier intrusion, the memory of Lynx’s emotionless departure lingering like an unresolved footnote neither of them had properly acknowledged. The festival noise had softened here slightly, replaced by the more distant hum of the Overworld’s constant activity, where wind, machinery, and human movement blended into a single continuous atmosphere that never truly stopped but never quite demanded attention either.

Seele’s hand darted out again with sudden precision, aiming for Sunny’s as though it were an established right rather than an attempted action, and Sunny reacted instantly, shifting his arm just enough for her fingers to miss him entirely, the motion smooth and practiced in a way that suggested this was no longer the first attempt and would not be the last. Her hand cut through empty air before retracting with mild irritation, only to immediately attempt again a moment later, as if repetition itself was a form of persuasion.

Sunny leaned slightly away, his tone carrying the weary defensiveness of someone forced to engage in a negotiation he had never agreed to participate in.

"Uh, actually, well, you see, I think my hand prefers to hold the air. It’s cool, soothing, and totally not warm and soft."

Seele rolled her eyes in response, her expression flattening into something that suggested she was running out of patience for his evasions, before her hand snapped forward once more with renewed determination.

"Bite me!"

Sunny froze mid-motion, the abruptness of the phrase landing in his thoughts in a way that was not immediately aligned with its intended meaning, and his expression shifted into one of cautious analysis rather than immediate rejection. The phrasing, the tone, and the context briefly collided in his mind in a way that produced an entirely unintended conclusion, and for a moment he genuinely considered the statement as though it had been meant literally.

"...Why would you want me to bite you? Just so you know, I haven’t delved into cannibalism yet..."

Seele’s scowl deepened immediately, her irritation now fully visible as she tightened her grip on his hand at the exact moment his confusion made him still long enough to be caught.

"It’s a metaphor!"

Sunny looked at her in disbelief, his expression shifting between genuine confusion and reluctant acceptance of correction, as though he was actively revising his understanding of the interaction in real time.

"You sure? I mean, I could, but I don’t get why you want me to eat you."

"Just shut up!"

"Affirmative."

With that exchange resolved in the only way it ever seemed to resolve between them, the two of them finally began to walk across the Overworld together, their steps falling into a steady rhythm that neither of them explicitly agreed upon but both seemed to maintain regardless. The cold air stretched across the open space around them, brushing against exposed skin and carrying with it the faint bite of distant snowfields, while the festival sounds faded gradually behind them into something more distant and less structured.

Seele glanced sideways at him after a moment of walking, her grip on his hand remaining firm as though it had become an unconscious habit rather than a deliberate action, and her voice carried a tone of casual observation.

"Hey, you didn’t like borscht much, did you?"

Sunny blinked at her, the question landing somewhere between unfamiliar and vaguely reconstructable, as though he had to search for the reference rather than simply recall it.

"A what?"

Seele shot him a look that combined disbelief and mild annoyance, the kind reserved for situations where clarification felt insulting by its necessity.

"What we were eating earlier?"

Sunny blinked again, this time with recognition slowly forming as the memory aligned itself into place, and his expression shifted slightly as comprehension settled in.

"Oh, yeah. Nah, it wasn’t all that. Kind of gave me nostalgia for some weird reason."

The statement lingered briefly between them, not because it was particularly profound, but because it came from a place that even Sunny himself could not immediately categorize, a sensation that did not quite belong to his otherwise precise and complete memory. The thought passed through him without resolution, as if brushing against something sealed away rather than forgotten.

Seele continued walking beside him, her gaze shifting forward again as she spoke in a tone that carried mild commentary rather than deep interest.

"You know, Bronya was supposed to give out a speech about an hour ago. Guess she didn’t feel like it."

Sunny shrugged slightly, his response immediate and unconcerned, as though the information did not require anything to process.

"Or, she’s busy."

"Or that."

After that, the two of them continued in silence, their footsteps syncing naturally as they moved through the Overworld, the environment around them gradually expanding into broader openness as they neared the towering presence of Qlipoth Fort. Seele’s hand remained tightly wrapped around his, not loosening even when the silence stretched longer than necessary, as though the absence of conversation made the connection more important rather than less.

Sunny, however, was not as calm as his exterior suggested, and within the quiet progression of their walk, his thoughts drifted into a space he rarely allowed them to linger in for long. In all honesty, he was horrified. He knew where this was going, and had tried to avoid it, but Fate made it inevitable all the same.

He knew what Seele wanted.

He knew what he wanted.

They were two completely different things.

Seele wanted a boyfriend. In particular, the idealized version of Sunny she had in her mind: A kindhearted yet arrogant and annoying guy who has more than a couple quirks.

On the other hand, Sunny wanted someone who he could give the world to, and who would give him two worlds back. Such a person does not exist. Despite how similar their desires were, they were utterly different.

The rhythm of their walking continued as his thoughts shifted further inward, and the lightness of the festival world around them felt increasingly distant as memory and reflection took hold. Thinking back to Rain, Sunny’s mood plummeted. He had spent his youth before the First Nightmare scrummaging up money through whatever means necessary to find his sister. Murder and theft was his trade, luring those disgusting adults who wanted to have a ’good time’ with a comparatively adorable young boy into alleyways, before he killed them, robbing them of whatever they had on them. He had skipped out on meals, neglected buying newer clothes, and remained homeless just to scrounge up enough to higher a trustworthy detective, not knowing the number of people he slaughtered.

The worst part was not the violence itself, nor the exhaustion that followed it, but the strange clarity with which he had once justified every action, as though survival had been enough to define morality in a world that offered none. For an Outskirts rat, his life wasn’t even that bad. His parents loved him enough to name him, to take care of him and his sister until their passing. After Rain got adopted, he could have lived out his childhood in the orphanage, where he was clothed and fed. Eventually, as long as he behaved, perhaps he could have been adopted again. But he was too greedy. Too possessive. He wanted Rain all to himself, and deluded himself into believing she needed saving.

Sure, the Outskirts were bad, and plenty of individuals who had done much worse than Sunny existed there, if not the Universe as a whole. They, however, had an excuse. Abandoned by their parents. Not allowed in orphanages due to their deformed appearance. They had no choice. Sunny did... and he didn’t regret it.

The admission settled in his mind without resistance, neither justified nor rejected, simply accepted as part of what he was rather than what he had become. In the end, the people he killed deserved it for what they intended to do to him with their disgusting bodies.

In the end, seeing Rain happy with her family, he finally learned to let go of false hope. Learned that he was different, that his feelings were too intense to be matched by another person.

That was okay. He’d be alright. Maybe not truly happy with an equal, but he’d be fine. All he had to do was become so strong nobody could hurt him again. To escape the machinations of Fate, and the end Fated for all. To be truly free, even from the bonds with others. He just had to take it one small step at a time.

Eventually, the weight of his thoughts eased as their surroundings shifted once more, the towering walls of Qlipoth Fort rising into view like an immense boundary between the structured world of Belobog and the endless expanse beyond it. The stone and metal construction loomed with a cold authority, casting long shadows that stretched across the snowfields like frozen lines drawn across the earth itself, while the wind that moved around it carried a sharper edge, cutting through the open space with relentless consistency.

Seele tilted her head upward as they neared it, her expression shifting into something mischievous once again, the earlier silence between them dissolving as quickly as it had formed.

"Wanna check out Bronya’s balcony?"

Sunny tilted his head slightly, his tone carrying cautious suspicion mixed with familiarity.

"If I say ’not necessarily’ again, are you still going to make me?"

Seele walked backwards in front of him now, pointing at him with both hands while grinning in a way that made her intentions entirely transparent.

"Now you’re getting it."

A moment later, she vanished into holographic afterimages, the air distorting where she had been standing as she warped upward toward Bronya’s balcony with effortless familiarity. Sunny sighed, the sound carrying equal parts resignation and resignation-adjacent acceptance, before allowing Shadow Step to carry him upward as well, the world folding briefly around him before he reappeared beside her.

From their perch, the Overworld revealed itself in full scale, and the view stretched outward into a vast frozen expanse that seemed to extend beyond comprehension, where endless snowfields rolled like pale oceans frozen mid-motion, their surfaces catching the faint sunset in uneven patterns that shifted as the wind moved across them. Mountain ranges rose in the distance like ancient fortresses carved from stone and ice, their jagged silhouettes softened by layers of frost and distance, each peak blending into the next until they formed a continuous, broken horizon that seemed to encircle the world itself.

’Ah... what a sexy sunset.’

The wind moved across the landscape in visible currents, lifting snow into drifting veils that stretched and dissolved across the open space before settling again into the endless white, as though the world was constantly exhaling and forgetting its own breath.

Eventually, Seele nudged him lightly, her voice breaking through the quiet with abrupt simplicity that did not match the scale of the view around them.

"I love you. Say it back."

Sunny made a face of despair at her forceful tone.

***

Bronya moved swiftly through the upper corridors of Qlipoth Fort, her footsteps echoing in a steady rhythm that normally reflected discipline and control, yet now carried an undercurrent of unease that she refused to acknowledge directly.

The fortress around her felt subtly wrong in a way she could not immediately articulate, as though the structure itself had been altered in her absence, its familiar order replaced by a quiet pressure that clung to the air and settled into the seams of every surface. She kept her posture straight, her expression composed, but her senses remained sharpened, reacting to every shift in sound and temperature with growing suspicion that something had already passed through these halls before her arrival.

The conversation with the IPC representative still lingered in her mind like a bruise that had not yet fully formed. The tone had been polite, even measured, but every word had carried the weight of inevitability, a reminder that Belobog’s survival under the Eternal Freeze had come at a cost recorded far beyond its own jurisdiction.

The founders had accepted assistance that no one living now had been aware of, and now that the world had thawed, the debt had come due in full silence. Bronya had listened carefully, as she always did, but there had been no solution offered that did not involve sacrifice, and when Sunny’s name had been brought up in her thoughts, it had been with the fragile hope that his absence now was not permanent.

He had told her to contact him when the IPC arrived.

She had tried.

For the past few hours, there hadn’t been a single response.

The elevator doors closed with a soft mechanical hiss that felt louder than it should have in the enclosed space, and Bronya allowed herself a single controlled breath as the descent began. The further she traveled downward, the more the atmosphere shifted, not in any immediately visible way, but in something more subtle, a thinning of warmth and presence that made the air feel less inhabited, as though she was moving into a section of the fortress that had been forgotten by time itself. The illuminated floor indicators ticked downward in steady increments, and with each passing level, the silence deepened until even the machinery felt distant, muffled, as though sound itself struggled to travel in the lower depths.

When the doors finally opened, the change was immediate and absolute.

The corridor beyond was filled with ice.

Bronya stepped forward without realizing she had done so, her breath catching in a way she could not suppress as her eyes adjusted to the scene in front of her. The hallway was lined with frozen figures, not in the sense of scattered damage or environmental exposure, but preserved entirely in unnatural stillness, each body encased in clear ice that held their final expressions with horrifying clarity.

Some stood upright as though interrupted mid-guard duty, others were collapsed against the walls or half-turned as if attempting to flee, but all of them shared the same absence of motion that made the space feel less like a corridor and more like a sealed exhibit of a moment where life had been abruptly paused.

Bronya’s hand summoned her rifle without hesitation, the weapon rising into her grip as the bayonet extended with a sharp mechanical click that echoed too loudly in the silence. Her stance shifted into readiness, her eyes scanning the corridor for any sign of movement or residual threat, yet there was nothing that responded to her presence.

No shifting shadows, no distant noise, no trace of life that would suggest the cause of what she was seeing remained nearby. The stillness felt deliberate, not natural, as though whatever had passed through had done so with intent rather than chaos.

Her mind immediately reached for classification, searching through known anomalies and prior encounters for something that matched the pattern before her. A wraith-like entity. A phenomenon similar to the Fallen Terror they had encountered in the orphanage. Something that did not interact with space in a conventional way.

The memory of that encounter surfaced uninvited, bringing with it the sensation of being watched by something that did not fully exist within perception, and Bronya felt a brief, controlled tightening in her chest as she forced the thought aside.

Retreat would have been the logical decision. Calling the Silvermane Guards would have been standard protocol... but this was the floor where her mother was kept.

Bronya moved forward.

The corridor stretched ahead in a long, narrowing path of ice and silence, each step she took bringing her deeper into a space that felt increasingly removed from the rest of the world. The frozen figures became more concentrated as she advanced, their placement less random now and more deliberate, as though they had been arranged in response to movement or resistance.

Some were positioned as if they had been attempting to defend something unseen, while others appeared to have been caught mid-report or mid-action, their final moments preserved with disturbing precision that suggested not only overwhelming force but control over how that force had been applied.

The deeper she went, the more the air itself seemed to lose warmth, until even her breath felt like it belonged to another environment entirely.

There was no sound of struggle, no lingering trace of conflict beyond the aftermath, only the oppressive certainty that whatever had moved through here had done so without interruption. When she reached the intersection leading toward her mother’s room, she no longer needed confirmation that something had gone wrong, only confirmation of how far it had spread.

The corridor leading to the room was almost empty compared to the rest, which made the absence feel even more unnatural. The silence here was heavier, not lighter, as though it had been compressed into a single point at the end of the hall. Bronya’s grip on her rifle tightened slightly as she approached the door, her movements slowing without conscious intent, as though her body was attempting to delay what her mind already understood was inevitable.

She opened the door.

The room inside was cold enough that it felt physically different from the corridor, a sharp drop in temperature that struck her immediately as unnatural. Frost had spread across the floor in uneven patterns, forming jagged lines that converged toward the center of the room where something once stood and no longer did in any recognizable form. The furniture had not been destroyed so much as disregarded, still intact but coated in a thin layer of ice that gave everything a suffocating stillness.

In the center of the room lay a shattered ice structure.

At first, her mind refused to assign it identity, as though recognition itself would confirm something irreversible.

Then, slowly, the shape resolved into something familiar, the remnants of Serval’s form fractured and collapsed into pieces that no longer held coherence as a whole.

The ice was not simply broken but torn apart, as though something had driven through it with deliberate force, leaving behind deep claw-like impressions that disrupted the structure at its core and radiated outward in violent patterns of crystallized fracture.

Bronya stood still for a long moment, her expression tightening not into panic but into something far more contained, something that bordered on refusal.

There was no movement in the room, no sound, no lingering presence, only the undeniable evidence that something had been here and had left nothing intact. Her breath became shallow without her permission, and for a moment she simply stared at the remains without stepping closer, as though proximity would confirm what distance still allowed her to deny.

Then she turned.

Her movements were faster now, less controlled, as she exited the room and followed the only remaining indication available to her, the continuation of the trail beyond what should have been a sealed and secure level.

The corridor outside had changed again, the frozen bodies now more scattered, less orderly, as though the force behind their condition had shifted from precision to urgency.

Eventually, she reached the breach.

The wall of the fortress had been torn open, not collapsed or damaged in any conventional sense, but forcibly ruptured in a way that suggested overwhelming strength applied without restraint.

The edges of the opening were jagged and uneven. Beyond it, the Underworld of Belobog stretched downward in layers of dim light and industrial decay, the vertical expanse opening like a wound in the city’s foundation.

And below that opening, the trail continued.

Frozen corpses extended downward into the Underworld streets in an unbroken line, stretching far beyond immediate visibility, their forms scattered across roads and pathways that should have been alive with movement but were instead reduced to stillness. It was not a battlefield in any traditional sense, nor a site of collapse, but something closer to an unfolding absence of life that had moved through the city with direction and consistency, leaving behind only preserved silence in its wake.

Bronya stepped back slightly, her hand rising to her mouth as the reality of the scale finally settled in without resistance.

She hunched over and emptied her stomach.

***

Within the far reaches of the Underworld, where the air grew heavier and the remnants of Belobog’s industrial past pressed in from all sides, the Robot Settlement stood in quiet defiance against decay. It was a place that felt detached from the rest of the city, insulated not by walls alone but by the presence of something far more deliberate, a careful balance between machine logic and human persistence that had carved out a fragile stability in an otherwise collapsing world.

At its center stood Clara’s mansion, an anomaly even within an already unusual settlement, its structure both refined and reinforced, bearing the marks of meticulous construction and repeated modification. The interior carried a warmth that contrasted sharply with the cold emptiness beyond its walls, though that warmth was not entirely comforting, as if it had been preserved rather than naturally sustained.

Inside the dining room, the atmosphere was thick with tension that had yet to erupt, a silent pressure that coiled beneath the surface of an otherwise calm scene.

Clara sat at the table, her small frame relaxed in posture but not in presence, her attention focused on the cookie in her hand as she slowly brought it to her mouth. The motion was unhurried, deliberate, as though the act of eating itself served as a stabilizing ritual rather than a necessity. Across from her sat a man who seemed equally at ease, though the ease he displayed carried a different quality entirely, something performative, something sharpened by intent.

Svarog stood nearby, his towering frame partially angled toward the window, the single luminous eye embedded within his headpiece dimly reflecting the exterior light. His chassis bore none of the wear or limitation of standard constructs, the metal refined to a level that bordered on unnatural, each segment seamlessly integrated with the next. The upgrades Clara had made were evident not only in the structure itself but in the subtle hum of contained power that radiated from him, restrained yet ever-present, like a storm held just beneath the surface.

Across the table, the man leaned back slightly in his chair, one leg crossed over the other with casual confidence. His blonde hair fell neatly into place beneath the brim of his fedora, and though his sunglasses obscured his eyes, there was no mistaking the awareness behind them. His smile never wavered, a constant expression that suggested amusement rather than politeness, as though every moment existed for his entertainment alone.

Clara brushed her bangs aside with a small, absent motion before turning her head slightly toward Svarog, noting the subtle shift in his posture as his attention drifted toward the window. Then, without breaking the quiet rhythm of the room, she returned her gaze to the man across from her.

"So, Mister Aventurine, I assume you didn’t come alone?"

The man’s smile widened ever so slightly, as though the question had pleased him.

"Nope. Besides the good old rank and file, I came with... well, technically, she’s equal to me at work, but she’s way weaker! Nothing like the two of us, you see... ah, to answer your question, call her Topaz. She should have finished talking to that Supreme Guardian of yours by now."

Clara’s lips curved into a small, polite smile, though there was something measured behind it, something that suggested calculation rather than warmth.

"Is that so? Well, even an ant can slay elephants if it leads them off a cliff."

Aventurine let out a low whistle, clearly entertained.

"Never heard that one before. Seen it yourself?"

Clara blinked once, her expression momentarily neutral as she processed the question.

"How did you know?"

He shrugged lightly, the motion casual, almost dismissive.

"Lucky guess."

The conversation lulled briefly as Clara took another bite of her cookie, her movements steady and unhurried. Aventurine reached forward after a moment, plucking one from the plate with the same casual confidence, taking a bite as though he were a guest invited under peaceful terms rather than someone who had arrived under circumstances that warranted caution.

Once they both finished chewing, Clara’s gaze sharpened slightly, her attention narrowing as she leaned forward just enough to signal a shift in the conversation.

"So, why today? Surely, you didn’t come for the festivities."

Aventurine tapped his chin thoughtfully, tilting his head as though considering multiple answers before settling on one.

"Would you prefer the actual reason or whatever sounds nice?"

Clara did not hesitate.

"The former."

He snapped his fingers with a small grin, clearly delighted.

"Guessed it!"

A brief, almost theatrical cough followed before he continued.

"To keep things short, the people here have been struck by misfortune."

Clara’s eyes narrowed slightly, her expression tightening in subtle concentration.

"Elaborate."

Aventurine raised a finger, as though delivering a lecture.

"When we came across this planet, I had a premonition. A large percentage of Belobog’s population... will die. Thousands of the mundane. A dozen Awakened. Two Masters. That’s the casualties I expect, though, I could always be wrong."

The words settled heavily into the room, their weight not diminished by the casual tone in which they had been delivered. Clara paused, the cookie in her hand momentarily forgotten as she processed the scale of what he was describing.

That was not something to be dismissed lightly.

"And the source of this misfortune?"

Aventurine scratched the back of his head, his smile turning slightly sheepish, though the gesture felt more like an act than a genuine display of uncertainty.

"It’s a person. Somebody who is constantly on and off the planet. There were a few months where the source disappeared, but... they’re on the planet right now, it seems."

Clara’s brow furrowed, her thoughts turning inward as she searched through her knowledge for someone who fit that description.

Then her eyes widened.

Aventurine noticed immediately, his grin sharpening with interest.

"I’m guessing you know them? Well, I also learned that whenever I eventually encounter them, that I should keep my eyes covered, else I’d go insane. So I got this neat blindfold—"

Clara cut him off without raising her voice.

"Your goal is to use this misfortune as a way to decide whether or not pursuing this project is worth it. If you can change the outcome and mitigate it, Belobog would be indebted towards the IPC. If you can’t, then the reward no longer outweighs the risk."

Aventurine’s grin widened into something almost feral in its satisfaction.

"Jackpot."

Clara tapped her finger lightly against the table, each motion measured and precise.

"You are informing me beforehand to prevent retaliation, likely intending to provide compensation in exchange for allowing you to act."

She paused, her gaze lingering on him for a moment longer before asking the question that had already formed in her mind.

"Why not just eliminate the source of the misfortune?"

Aventurine made a face, as though the idea itself was distasteful.

"That’s the thing. The source of misfortune is also a source of fortune. A driving force in Fate. If I get rid of them, I have the feeling... that there will be no concept of a future. And considering my Abilities revolve around luck and Fate, I don’t plan on sabotaging my talents for a backwards planet. No offense."

Clara considered that for a moment, her gaze lowering slightly as she processed the implications.

"Sequence 9: Monster. Sequence 8: Robot. Sequence 7: Lucky One. Sequence 6: Calamity Priest. Sequence 5: Winner. Sequence 4: Misfortune Mage. Sequence 3: Chaoswalker. Sequence 2: Soothsayer. Sequence 1: Snake of Mercury. As a Saint, you must be Sequence 4, right?"

Aventurine tilted his head, his smile never fading, though there was no visible surprise in his posture.

"What gave me away? Couldn’t I be a normal Transcendent?"

Clara let out a small laugh, the sound quiet but genuine.

"With that stench of Corruption coming off you? There’s no point in asking. Just take the names of the higher Sequences as a gift. Moreover... we have a guest, so let’s save this Belobog situation for later."

Aventurine clapped his hands together once, and in response, white sparks erupted across his body, forming into a sleek suit of armor that wrapped around him in layered segments. The design was smooth yet intricate, patterned with spade motifs that shimmered faintly as they settled into place. The colors shifted between green, black, and blue, the surface reflecting light in a way that made it seem almost fluid. A flowing fur-lined coat draped over his shoulders, and a mask-like helmet sealed over his face, obscuring his features entirely.

He adjusted his fedora atop the helmet with a small, deliberate motion, and when he spoke again, his voice was filtered through the armor, modulated into something deeper and more artificial.

"Here comes the queen."

Svarog’s arm lifted fully, the energy at his palm intensifying as it gathered into a concentrated point of light, his entire frame shifting into combat readiness without hesitation. Clara, meanwhile, continued to eat her cookie, her posture unchanged despite the mounting tension, as though the escalation had been anticipated long before it arrived.

A second later, the wall collapsed, and thousands of ice spears rained down upon them.